Department History

The following is an *.html version of Campbell, C. 2009. Circle of Geographers: A History of the Geography
Department at New Mexico State University. Southwestern Geographer 13: 89-101. Click
here for a *pdf version of the article.

Introduction

Prior to earning departmental status in 1992, geography had established a
strong presence within the College of Arts and Sciences at New Mexico
State University (NMSU). This began in the Department of Geography and
Geology with James I. Culbert (ph.D. 1939, Clark) as department head and
sole faculty member from 1946 through 1967 (1). As early as 1947 undergraduates
could major in geography with a 9-course offering focused on physical
geography. Enrollments also included education majors at NMSU who relied
heavily on geography courses for preparation to teach social sciences.

The forties and fifties saw dramatic social and political changes resulting
in changes in American thinking as American troops circled the globe during
World War II and returned home with a curiosity about names, places and cultures
previously unknown. America was no longer an isolated nation. The
NMSU geography curriculum adapted to this need and added courses that emphasized
current human events including The Industrial and Commercial Structure
of Europe and Geographic Foundations of World Power. This contributed
to increasing enrollment and interdisciplinary collaborations. The department
also fostered collaborations with physical chemists who helped out by teaching
geology courses.

Astronomical Forces Change Names

Change was strong in the department throughout the 1960s. In 1962
Clyde Tombaugh, an astronomer who had recently discovered Pluto, joined the
college faculty in what was then the Department of Earth Sciences. In 1964 a
geologist, William E. King (ph. D. 1959, University of Wisconsin) was hired
into the Department of Earth Sciences and Astronomy. By 1965 course offerings
included 15 geography, 3 geology, and 3 astronomy courses. The researchers
from each discipline in this department worked closely with those of
other departments and developed connections across campus with the physical
sciences laboratory (PSL) to house the first computer laboratories. This was
before the personal computer (PC) and mainframes needed ample space and
support staff. The computers were necessary within the department to address
spatial analysis of the manlland relationships that were becoming the focus of
the geographer's research. Recent advances at that time in aerial photography
and imagery meant that new skills were needed; the digital age was upon them
and the department responded by establishing the Laboratory for Cartography
and Spatial Analysis.

A strong positive influence of this era was Richard Helbock (Ph. D. 1973,
University of Pittsburg). Hired in 1968, Helbock was instrumental in the development
of a major in city and regional planning, which was first offered as a
major in 1973. When Helbock joined NMSU the department included two
astronomers, two geologists and two geographers including Culbert who was
retiring and John Whaley, an instructor. Whaley decided to leave and continue
his education in 1969.

Helbock recalls Clyde Tombaugh as "a scholar of the old school" who had
taught geography courses as needed before Helbock arrived (personal communication).
Faculty offices at that time were housed in Baldwin Hall, described
by Helbock as a one-story cinder block across from the library (Branson Hall).
Helbock is remembered as having an outgoing personality and he was well
liked by students and faculty (Czerniak, personal communication).

In 1969 William King assumed the role of department head from James
Culbert. The astronomy faculty had grown to four and they separated from the
department, which then reverted back to its former name: Department of Earth
Sciences.

In the early years many instructors contributed to the success and growth
of geography at NMSU. One of these, Carlos Parra (M.A. University of Colorado,
1971) joined the faculty in 1972. He enabled the department to offer
Spanish/English bilingual courses, as New Mexico State University is a minority
serving (Hispanic) institution and the role of geography in providing such
service courses to the university has been large. Up to four bilingual geography
courses were offered: Geographica General, Meso-America, Sud-America,
and Nuevo Mexico, primarily taught in Spanish from 1973 to 1978, when only
a bilingual seminar was offered in the Department of Earth Sciences. Geography
maintained steady growth in this period and by 1973 had 15 undergraduate
majors and three faculty members: Ronald C. Sheck, Richard Helbock and
Carlos Parra.

Russell Clemons (Ph.D. 1966, University of Texas, Austin) replaced Wm.
King as department head in 1978 and the next year a graduate degree in geology
was offered. The geography course offerings nearing the end of the
1970s offered choices from a variety of geographic core courses, techniques
and regions; core courses included Cultural Geography, Urban Geography,
Transportation Geography, World Regional Geography, Conservation Geography,
Historical Geography and World Agriculture and Food Problems. Technical
courses included Meteorology, Physical Geography, Cartography, Map
Analysis, Geomorphology, Spatial Analysis, and Remote Sensing. Regional
courses included Australia and Oceania, Asia, Europe, South America, North
America, and New Mexico. In addition, courses for education majors achieved
high enrollments, primarily Earth Sciences for Teachers and Teaching Geography
in Secondary Schools.

Separate Yet Equal

In 1982 Russell Clemons passed the scepter and Jerry Mueller assumed
the role of department head. During this time John A. Harrington, Jr. (Ph.D.
1980, Michigan State) taught Biogeography and brought strong remote sensing
skills to the Earth sciences department. At this time geography had two labs
where contract and research grants were fulfilled for a variety of federal, state
and local agencies. The Laboratory for Cartography and Spatial Analysis was a
modem production facility with photographic, typesetting, and full color capabilities;
the Digital Mapping Laboratory housed computer technology for digitizing,
map display, output, and digital image processing. These labs gave students
hands-on experience, skills and connections outside the classroom and
fostered collaborations locally within NMSU, as well as state and nationwide.
Students gained experience solving real-world spatial problems using geographic
information systems, spatial analysis, and remote sensing techniques.
William J. (Bill) Gribb (Ph.D. 1982, Michigan State University) came to
NMSU in 1982 bringing specialization in cartography, geostatistics and the
geography of Native Americans. He established the Geography Applications
and Research Laboratory (GARL) as a joint facility between geography and
the Physical Science Laboratory. Gribb taught Survey of Geography and Cultural
Geography as well as Cartography and Remote Sensing.

Kenneth E. (Ken) Kunkel (Ph.D. 1978, University of Wisconsin-Madison)
had a joint research and teaching position in the department of Earth sciences
beginning in 1982. He also served as the New Mexico State Climatologist.
His research emphasized atmospheric optical phenomena at the Atmospheric
Sciences Laboratory at White Sands Missile Range. He taught Climatology,
Meteorology and offered a graduate seminar in Electro-optical Meteorology in
1987. Kunkel left to join the Illinois State Water Survey in 1988.

Ronald Sheck (ph.D. 1969, University of Oregon) had taken over Helbock's
planning courses (Helbock left in 1981) and also taught Survey of Geography
and Middle America. Richard A. (Rich) Earl (Ph.D. 1983, Arizona
State University) taught Introduction to Physical Geography, Meteorology and
Map Analysis. He also set up a broadcast meteorology program for students in
journalism. Mueller's Cartography courses remained strong and he also offered
Desert Geomorphology for advanced undergraduate and graduate students.

Robert 1. (Bob) Czerniak (Ph.D. 1979, University of Colorado-Boulder)
joined the faculty in 1983. He had research interests in land use, urban geography,
transportation, and city and regional planning. Czerniak's arrival marked
the start of the modem era for geography at NMSU. He fostered relationships
of trust and collaboration with the city of Las Cruces and the State of New
Mexico, and these facilitated an improvement in growth planning, urban development
and transportation management in the region.

In 1986 the department head became Bill King's job again as Mueller
passed the scepter back. At this time the number of geography and planning
majors was continually growing and this drove the need for a graduate program
in geography. The Master of Applied Geography program was added in 1987.
Now the Department of Earth Sciences offered four majors for undergraduates
and two graduate programs. The 75 undergraduate majors could choose from:
geography, city and regional planning, geology, or geological sciences. Thirtynine
graduate students focused on either applied geography or geology.

The addition of Albert (AI) Peters, (Ph.D. 1989, Nebraska-Lincoln) to the
faculty in the mid-1980s moved the analysis of land use and land cover at
NMSU into the digital age. Al arrived ABD with his MS from San Jose State
University and started as an instructor. His research emphasized land classification
and change detection, accomplished with technological advances in
digital processing of aerial photography and satellite imagery. Bradley Reed
(Ph.D. 1989, University of Kansas) specialized in biogeography and taught
Biogeography, North America and a Geography Colloquium
in the late 1980s.

John B. (Jack) Wright, (Ph.D. 1990, University of California-Berkeley)
joined the NMSU faculty in 1989. He brought experience in land conservation,
cultural geography and land tenure. He enhanced the department with a
strong passion for understanding the man-land relationship in the American
West through the application of cultural geographic research and landscape
analysis. As the department prepared to start the nineties there were 21 geography
majors, 16 planning majors and 12 graduate students, two of these had
completed their programs to earn masters of applied geography (MAG) degrees
by 1989.

By this time the two disciplines in the Department of Earth Sciences
(geography and geology) had established independent operating procedures.
Each had a separate secretary managing the daily affairs for a subset of the 12 faculty,
two adjunct professors and five college instructors. Graduate enrollment was nearly split
50/50 between applied geography and geology. The geography/geology equity in the
Department of Earth Sciences did not include the budget and operating costs.
Both disciplines experienced increasing demands for computers and specialized
equipment so, not surprisingly, resource allocation became a point of tension.

Independence

The nineties were a decade in which many trends in geography at New
Mexico State began to come full circle. Czerniak had demonstrated strong
leadership skills from the early days and served as co-department head from
1990-1992. He established a positive trajectory for the department and easily
assumed the role as the first department head when the Department of Geography
was formally established in 1992. The near even split of faculty in each
the newly formed departments resulted in Jerry Mueller, Jack Wright, Bradley
Reed, and AI Peters working under Czerniak in geography.

The discipline was growing in many ways. The PC was popular; geographic
information systems (GIS) and remote sensing programs and data
sources were becoming available without the need for a mainframe computer.
The adoption of the graphical user interface (GUI) for spatial analysis programs,
i.e. Arc-Info to Arc-View, brought non-programmers onboard for geographic
information systems and spatial analysis. Research conducted by
NMSU's geographers during this time approached the physical environment
and the man/land relationship from every aspect. Collaborations, grants and
contracts with many of the counties of New Mexico and Texas, White Sands
Missile Range, Fort Bliss, and NASA supported graduate and undergraduate
research and training.

The Geographic Applications Research Laboratory (GARL) completed
projects and contracts spanning a variety of geospatial needs in the region including
cadastral mapping, airport and highway transportation planning, taxation
districts, economic development opportunities and numerous cases of
technical GIS assistance for the states, cities and counties of Texas and New
Mexico.

Wright's emphasis on land tenure, community development, and conservation
easements began a trend in which hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural
and open space would be preserved throughout Montana, Wyoming,
Colorado and New Mexico.

The applied focus of the geography department at New Mexico State University
was further expanded when Michael N. DeMers (Ph.D. 1985, University
of Kansas) joined the faculty in the fall of 1992. Geographic Information
Systems (GIS) had revolutionized the geographic discipline as a whole, and the
study of GIS quickly became a priority for land managers and planners of
many backgrounds. DeMers' research combined zoogeography interests with
a landscape ecology approach to evaluate the influence of spatial patterns on
the distribution of organisms across a surface. He had worked closely with
Duane Marble and others at The Ohio State University (1986-1993) to develop
GIS theory and applications courses, and he applied his technological skills
and enthusiasm toward developing applied Cartography and GIS courses in
New Mexico.

Daniel P. (Dan) Dugas (Ph.D. 1993, University of Oregon) arrived at New
Mexico State University in 1996. He had extensive geologic exploration experience
in the field with work in Africa exploring fossil grasses and soils, and
in Oregon evaluating landforms and aeolian processes. This strong background
in geomorphology and physical geography with a focus on field techniques
and mapping provided a link between the digital mapping and an understanding
of processes driving patterns. Dugas developed dynamic, engaging
and popular Introduction to Physical Geography, Geomorphology,
Map Use and Analysis and Aerial Photo Interpretation courses and lab
activities. He emphasized getting students out of the classroom and demonstrated
skills such as map creation, GPS navigation, and land cover identification and
field techniques that brought students into the major.

5-Year Check-up (97-98)

When Dan Dugas arrived the department was five years young and a reevaluation
of the undergraduate curriculum was on the slate for the next year.
Bob Czerniak remained department head and directed GARL, with Mueller,
Wright, DeMers and Dugas filling out the faculty roster. Faculty research interests
at the time included physical geography, transportation, planning, biogeography,
landscape ecology, geographic information systems and Latin
America. Funded projects for the 97-98 academic year totaled S347,000 (the
lowest since the department was established). The department boasted a
100% placement of graduates.

Mike DeMers' combined skills, perspectives and experience in the classroom
built upon his education background to culminate in the 1997 publication
of a widely adopted GIS textbook: Fundamentals of Geographic Information
Systems (now in 4thedition). His accomplishment generated enormous positive
energy for the department and brought many graduate and undergraduate students
to NMSU.

Geography course offerings at this time included 21 courses: Introduction
to Physical Geography, Survey of Geography, Introduction to Meteorology,
Map Use and Air Photo, World Regional Geography, Latin America, Fundamentals
of Biogeography, Economic Geography, Urban Geography, Australia,
Geomorphology, Cultural Geography, Fluvial and Environmental Geomorphology,
Land Use and Land Rent, Transportation Geography, Environmental Planning,
Applied Geomorphology, GIS Modeling and Design, Introduction to Remote
Sensing, and Advanced Spatial Analysis. Cross-listed courses added to
the choices (Soils, Soil Classification, and World Agriculture and Food Problems).
Planning majors were also offered Introductory Planning and Community
Development, Legal Aspects of Planning, and Housing and Land Development.

There were now 34 geography majors, 13 planning majors and 18 full and
part-time graduate students in the department. Course objectives and sequencing
were re-evaluated to reflect the impact GIS and software innovations were
having across the globe. The need for experienced graduate teaching assistants
in the labs started a positive feedback loop in which the quality and intensity of
lab exercises and projects bloomed. Undergraduates frequently earned hands-on
experience via internships, course projects and fieldwork, and this helped
establish the quality and utility of the applied geography major to many professional
communities.

Thirty-four masters degrees had been awarded since the creation of the
MAG in 1989, and these spanned topics from the application of satellite data
for land classification, forest architecture, and sedimentation patterns; GIS to
model elk habitat, urbanization and flood hazards, community potential for
retirement locations, county assessment, and recreational management. The
need to increase computer access and work stations, as well as maintain licensing
for state-of-the-art programs drove the department to seek funds for these
as well as for a departmental computer technician, and to increase the number
of and stipends for graduate students.

Recruitment of undergraduate majors remained successful and graduate
student success continued. The trend of increasing enrollments sat positively
with the dean and the department's growth was supported. At the five year
mark the geography department at New Mexico State University had successfully
established itself as a well-rounded, self-sustaining program with both
cultural and physical emphases and the technology to employ spatial analysis
to each.

The New Millennium

By the turn of the century NMSU's geography faculty had established a
positive reputation and a synergy among themselves, across the university and
in the community. This overlying success fostered collaboration and student
participation giving the department an open and friendly feeling. Classrooms
were being remodeled to include a "smart podium" which provided multimedia
software and hardware to support and enhance traditional lecture and
laboratory activities. Jack Wright had a special charisma in the classroom that
boosted enrollments in his courses and brought more students to the major. He
also taught the graduate Research Design course in which he had a positive
influence on graduate research development and success. Dugas continued to
give students field experience via his Geomorphology course by employing a
wet lab that included a stream table and by providing tools for analysis of sedimentation
at check dams constructed in the Rio Grande Basin during the
1930s and 40s.

Czerniak passed the scepter of department head to DeMers in fall of 2000
and took on the role of graduate advisor. Czerniak remained the anchor for the
planning major, which offered courses in Introduction to Planning and Community
Development, Transportation Geography, and Urban Geography. and
required an internship. Wright offered courses in Environmental Planning and
Land Use Law. Cartography labs were now conducted using GIS and the demand
from geography majors and students across campus made this and the
Fundamentals of GIS popular classes. This popularity spawned the creation of
both undergraduate and graduate minors in GIS by 2001.

Christopher P. (Chris) Brown (Ph.D. 1998, San Diego State University/
University of California at Santa Barbara) arrived to join the faculty at NMSU
in 2000. His research background in transboundary (U.S.-Mexican border)
water issues of the Southwest made him an excellent compliment to the department.
In addition, he brought a strong background in GIS and geospatial
tools, which he presented in an intense yet easy-going style. He also quickly
established a strong relationship with the Water Resources Research Institute
(WRRI), which would foster numerous research projects and employ both
graduate and undergraduate students.

A strong contributor to the department in this era was Biology Emeritus
Professor Walter G. Whitford. He contributed a course in Wildland Restoration
to the planning course list and also offered Desert Ecology, which was
cross-listed with Geography, Biology and Fisheries and Wildlife Science. A
series of adjunct faculty and college instructors continued to provide courses to
enhance the regular course list including Introduction to Meteorology and Climatology
taught by Terrence Huck (MAG 1998).

In spring of 2000, David Garber taught an advanced GIS course, Using PC
ArcInfo, followed by Using ArcView 3.2. This course, typically offered
through Weekend College, provided advanced GIS training for professionals,
advanced undergraduates and graduate students. As instructors cycled
through and software upgrades prevailed the course evolved into a capstone
course GIS Practicum with instructors Ed Falconer (2001-2002), Mathew Rich
(2003-2005) and John Kennedy (2006 to present). Cross-listed courses with
the college of agriculture also enhanced the geography curriculum including
Soil Morphology, Soil Classification, and Soils and Land Use taught by Hugh
Monger, and World Agriculture and Food Problems taught by Brian Hurd and
others.

2002 - A Decade Strong

At the ten-year mark the Geography Department had demonstrated an impressive
increase in research activity and funding while maintaining strong
numbers in undergraduate and graduate enrollment. DeMers remained department
head and Czerniak continued as director of GARL, while Wright took
over as graduate advisor, with Dugas and Brown filling out the faculty roster.
Research funding and grants topped $1.32 million with much of that continuing
to support student experiential learning as employees in the project lab,
which was renamed the Spatial Applications and Research Center (SpARC).
Projects in the lab included cadastral mapping, biodiversity and endangered species
monitoring, and transportation analysis. Chris Brown took over as director
ofSpARC in 2003.

There were now 41 geography majors, 9 planning majors and 18 graduate
students enrolled in the program. The breadth of students from many disciplines
choosing a GIS minor indicated the popularity and success of the GIS
minor. Among these were students from fisheries and wildlife, range sciences,
environmental science, sociology and anthropology, surveying, and education.
Graduate research projects incorporating GIS included collaborations with the
Bureau of Land Management, NM Fish and Game, Texas Department of Transportation,
U.S. Department of Transportation, Jornada Experimental Range,
and White Sands Missile Range. Graduates of the department still enjoyed
100% employment in careers related to their degree when sought. MAG
graduates accepted positions in local, state and national agencies and offices
including NOAA, USFS, ESRI, EROS, NM-DOT, TX-DOT, WSMR, NPS,
BLM and the Nature Conservancy. The master of applied geography was not
strictly a terminal degree; a number of students have continued to obtain their
doctorate.

Faculty research publications span a range of professional journals including
Journal of the American Planning Association, Focus, The Journal of Arid
Environments, Quaternary Review, Geographical Review, Urban Lawyer, Operational
Geographer, Journal of Planning Research and Education, Resources
in Education, Journal of Geography, Southwestern Geographer, Journal of
California and Great Basin Anthropology, Journal of Contemporary Water
Research and Education, and the Journal of Borderland Studies. In addition,
book reviews by faculty are published in The Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, Geographical Review and The Professional Geographer.

Changes to the curriculum had focused mainly on renaming and renumbering
to reflect societal trends and sequencing. For example Geography
111G, Introduction to Physical Geography was renamed Geography of the
Natural Environment; Geography 201G (Survey of Geography) was renumbered
to Geography 120G. Other than these administrative changes in curriculum,
internal course updates and revisions of materials continued as always to
reflect current issues and research results. Faculty continued to emphasize the
application of basic geographic concepts, mapping and technical skills in all
courses.

Increasing enrollments meant increasing pressures on faculty with high
course loads (3/2), graduate advising, and service and research requirements.
These pressures prompted DeMers to seek to increase the number of faculty in
the department by untried means. He approached the department about sponsoring
an enthusiastic MAG student to the New Mexico Commission on
Higher Education's loan-for-service program, which would bring the promising
candidate back to NMSU geography in a tenure-track faculty position upon
completion of their doctorate degree. Theoretically this would take the faculty
count to six. The proposal was accepted and the student (this author) left to
begin her doctorate at UCLA.

In 2004 the dean tapped Bob Czerniak's talents and he was promoted to
interim associate dean of research. His presence in the dean's office was a
success and the "interim" was dropped trom his title. This meant further demands
on his and the department's time as he necessarily reduced the number
of courses he taught. The popularity of the planning major had never increased
as hoped and a decision about the future of the geography department and how
to effectively cover both majors without Czerniak's contribution came into
question. Add faculty to cover the planning major or let it go? Though a difficult
decision, the planning major passed into history. In an interesting turn of
events the Western Planners Association named Czerniak 2005 Planner of the
Year.

In fall of 2004 DeMers passed the scepter of department head to Wright
and Dugas took over as graduate advisor. The trend of increasing enrollments
in the geography major had continued and the decision to focus on one major
was proving to be wise. Wright injected new energy into the program by actively
recruiting new majors and establishing a goal to upgrade classroom and
lab facilities. This began with computer upgrades in the teaching lab, and
planning for expansion and remodeling of existing space and resources. Current
faculty included DeMers, Dugas, and Brown, with Czerniak teaching a
course or two per semester as his availability allowed.

Chris Brown developed successful collaborations with researchers in
many departments across campus including Animal and Range Sciences to
explore the effects of land use change on acequia systems in northern New
Mexico, and Health and Social Services to conduct research into the distribution
of West Nile Virus. He has also established collaborations with researchers
at universities in Spain and the Middle East (2). In addition, he is a member
of the faculty senate and numerous other committees at NMSU.
Both DeMers and Brown have made strong contributions to the University
Consortium on Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) and DeMers also
served as an editor of the Geographic Information Science and Technology Body
of Knowledge (3).

Dan Dugas has created such interesting field and lab exercises for his Map
Use and Analysis and Geomorphology courses that he has had to add lab sections
to each. He has also proven to be an excellent graduate mentor with a large
proportion of his students continuing on to the doctorate.

Carol L. Campbell (Ph.D. 2005, University of California Los Angeles)
retuned to join the faculty in fall of 2005. She brought a strong background in
biogeography with field and remote sensing skills obtained from experience
describing bird habitats and niches in space and time. She had worked as a
wildlife biologist for the USFS in the Sierra Nevada, and for the BLM monitoring
endangered species in New Mexico. Campbell taught Biogeography,
and Humans and the Natural Environment (renamed from Survey of Geography),
and team-taught Desert Ecology with Walt Whitford. She also developed
a course, U.S. National Parks, which would add to the regional course offerings
in the department and, after her first year, taught Digital Image Processing.
Though at first it was hoped her position would increase the number of
geography faculty, this did not come to pass as Czerniak was increasingly
called away from his departmental duties by the dean's office.

Wright continued his expansion efforts by enlarging the teaching lab from
28 to 40 workstations with upgraded computers and flat-screen monitors. The
newly designed lab was also fitted with a "smart podium" and a highresolution
projector resulting in the largest GIS teaching lab in the southwest.
He also continued recruitment efforts and by fall 2007 the department boasted
75 majors, and a 20% increase in student credit hours over the previous year.
This growth dramatically increased pressures on the current faculty and two
new positions were requested.

Finally Growth

Michaela Buenemann (Ph.D. 2007, University of Oklahoma) joined the
faculty in fall 2008. She brought strong cartography, remote sensing, and GIS
skills, and research interests in arid lands and field methods. She taught Cartography
and GIS, and developed two seminar courses Southwest Environmental
Geography and Geospatial Natural Resource Analysis. Her position represented
the additional geography faculty originally requested in 2002 bringing
the total number of faculty to six.

Two prestigious university awards were presented to geography faculty in
2008. Chris Brown was awarded the Exceptional Achievement in Creative
Scholarly Activity award, and Jack Wright was rewarded for his teaching talent
with a Donald C. Roush Award for Teaching Excellence.

Czerniak's time for teaching in the department was nearly gone yet he
maintained a collaborative role in the SpARC lab contracts, and continued to
advise graduate students with research interests in planning. This too would
pass into history when he was named associate vice president for research and
administration in fall of 2008.

Wright and Czerniak began working toward winning a grant to increase
geospatial training and workforce development through the National Geospatial
Intelligence Agency (NGA, formerly the National Imagery and Mapping
Agency). The grant was in the form of a federal earmark that would provide
funds to universities to meet the nations growing need for geospatial analysts.
The location ofNMSU in proximity to three major military facilities (WSMR,
Fort Bliss, and NASA) and the arid landscapes of the region, which may be
used as landscape analogs for strategic sites such as those in the Middle East,
made NMSU a logical choice for this project. This grant, worth more than
$800,000, was awarded to geography, surveying and engineering, and the physical
sciences lab in fall of 2008. The grant included funding for geography student
scholarships and advanced training, two factors which were used to further
recruit students in to the major.

Currently the NMSU Geography Department is poised to start spring 2009
with over 120 undergraduate majors and 25 full or part-time graduate students.
Over 80 MAG degrees have been awarded. Grants and contracts for the year
exceed $1.6 million. Requests and proposals are in place to continue the
growth and expansion the department has demonstrated over the past 16 years.
Energy among the faculty and students is high and the influence of the circle of
geographers associated with the Geography Department at New Mexico State
University is expanding.

Notes

(1) William King, Earth Sciences, ed. Monroe Billington, New Mexico State
University College of Arts and Sciences Centennial History, Published by
the College of Arts and Sciences Centennial Committee, Las Cruces,
1988,pages 77-81.
(2) See Panorama: New Mexico State Alumni Magazine, Vol. 57, no. I.
(3) See http://www.aag.org/bok